Did you know that two thirds of women in prison are mothers?
February 1, 2012
There has been an 800% increase in the incarceration rate of women over the last three decades. Read more about women in prison here.
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CJS-360 Diversity Issues 
Im so bothered by this, I understand some women think that they may have to do what needs to be done to provide, but there is always a way, this makes me sad, because my mother was on drugs for roughly two years and sat a bit of jail time, even though I was old enough to take care of myself, it still effected me in some way, so I cant imagine how these young children feel, being placed out of the house and having noone to look up to, I posted this on my facebook page ( its the most looked at website available) in hopes that others see it.
Shauna,
I am sorry to hear that you had to go through the same ordeal kids are going through today. I was a drug addict for many years. I used drugs to cover up some horrible things I endured as a child. My children lost a mother while I was on drugs and I cannot go back and make up those years. Today, I take my experiences to educate young girls and boys as this is my way to give back. I am not saying that I can change anyone and yet if I reach just one I made a difference.
We know from your story and so many others that there is an issue and I continue to wonder when as a society we will stop, look and listen. Then we need to assist and make changes so kids do not have to be without their parents.
Carol LaFleur
Ladies thank you for your honest words to share with the group. We need to hear more of these stories with people around us. To hear them in the news is not the same like hearing them from a classmate or neighbor…I would like to say that women have been treated more fairly in court. In courts that judge would think twice before the sentence to a female because she would be a mother…now that judge is asking family members to care for the children…its also that the fathers of the children are not being accountable to raise their kids. I would say this in love but women…choice a better man….I am divorce with three girls and single with a job that pays little…but I went to court and fought to make him help me so that I would not fear to steal or commit a crime…we need to use the courts to go after the fathers..I wonder if the system helped the young girls in the early stages …we could make a difference before they commit a crime…build our young women….if Oprah can go to Africa and build a school …and those girls go to college…why is it…that we are not building our girls to women…take out the males…and ask all women to take one young girl and mentor her…then we will be happier about the prison system…I ask members of my church to support me in raising my daughters…I am bless because I need help…lets ask women with children if we can help them…
This is a disheartening issue to read about. Many of the women in prison or jail are there for drug related and non-violent offenses, 2/3 as the fact sheet points out. What I don’t understand is why there isn’t more of an emphasis on rehabilitation programs for these women. It seems to me that providing these women with the resources they need to get better, i.e drug treatment programs and counseling, would be a better option than incarceration. This, in my opinion, would not only help these women and their families but it would also lessen the financial strain on States that incarceration creates. Simply incarcerating women for non-violent offenses such as drug related offenses often does nothing to address the underlying causes of their problems and creates a “revolving door” type situation where they will continue to enter, leave, and re-enter the system. A no-win situation for any of the involved parties. The fact that many of the incarcerated women are mothers is also another reason to place a higher emphasis on rehabilitation options. This would help the women to be better mothers, become better role mothers for their children, and help to keep the family unit together and be stronger.
Brynn,
I totally agree with your post. If only more of society would think and see things that way. It would be called Conflict Transformation as we would deal with the immeadiate issue, get to the root of the problem and work towards a long term goal so this does not continue to happen.
Carol LaFleur
I am saddened at the rate of women going to prison. I am also saddened at how many of them are mothers. I know I did not have my mother in my life and it was very difficult to stay out of trouble. In my opinion the drug related offenses are the women selling drugs for financial reasons. Our economy has changed and the haves continue to have more and the have nots are getting even less. When you think about it they use this fast way to earn money to provide for their children. It is difficult when your child is picked on and bullied because they do not dress like the rest. I am not saying that selling drugs is the answer. What I am saying is we need to address the financial needs of the have nots withing society. When I was young things were not as materialistic as they are today. I only wish we could turn back time.
I think that there is a lack of parental training when there are high numbers of women in prison system. If there is actual parental training, women should not be found in the prison. Should you interview any of those women you found in prison system, you would actually conceptualized that they were raised from a single family; also, you would still found that they were abused when they were little girls. Again, some of those women you might come across in prison have a very poor upbringing and their mentalities are bad. As a result, they end up like their parents. In fact, those women who might be caught up in the prison system are the architects of their misfortune as well as their parents. It might look sad to hear that there are a high numbers of women who are serving in the prison system; however, we should not forget that most of these women are not salvageable.
Nduka,
I do not agree with your post at all. I feel all humans have a right to be heard and respected. For you to say “Most of these women are not salvageable” is very sad. If they were abused as a child that was not their fault and is a society we have a responsibility to assist and help to make change. Would you say the same thing about men who end up in the prison system? I would love to hear your answer. I would ask that you take the time to go to a womens prison and talk to someone who ended up there due to drugs. Then come back and give me your opinion as I am sure it would be different. When you stated what you did it made me angry as I feel you have lost hope in humans and the fact that with assistance they can change. I am one of those woman who did drugs and left behind my kids. Yes, I was abused sexually and physically on a daily basis as a child starting at the age of 5 years old. I was also padlocked in a room a large portion of each day. As a teenager and adult I covered the pain with drugs as I did not know any different. At the age of 30 years old I turned my life around and no longer did drugs. I cannot make up for the past with my kids and yet I can be there for them each and every day now.
I also for the past five years have spent my time volunteering by speaking to college students, high school students, middle school students and elementary school students telling them what I had endured so it does not happen to them. I have done more in the past 5 years then most will do in a lifetime. I was very salvageable and so are most of the other women.
Carol LaFleur
I find it astonishing the statistics presented in this article about women in prison, especially the racial disparity. Historically, women have been known as the primary care takers of children and would usually get probation rather than having children live with the father or another relative. I find it unusual that nearly 2/3 of women in prison are mothers – the children are missing out on a vital part of their life by having a mother who is locked up in prison. While it’s not fair to children to have a drug addicted parent in the home, it’s also unfair for children to grow up in an unstable home/environment and only getting to see their mother a few times a month.
The other difficult bump I’m having with these statistics is the fact that 2/3 of the women in prison were sentenced to non-violent/drug related offenses. My guess is the male population that is arrested and convicted of a drug offense gets treatment or probation, not a prison sentence. There’s a possibility they might receive a prison sentence for a repeated number of drug offenses, but there’s just no room in the prisons to have offenders with minor drug related offenses. Offenders usually don’t learn much from their mistakes when they are sentenced to prison as they would in treatment. Treatment teaches the coping skills they need to recover from the addiction as well as the skills they need to deter away from the drug addiction. The court system isn’t doing any body justice by locking up non-violent/drug offenders.
Thank you all for sharing your stories. I agree with alot of what everyone is saying. There needs to be more focus on rehabilitation programs. A high percentage of women that are incarcerated are not there for violent crimes but rather due to economic hardships and drug offenses. I believe incarceration only addresses the issue of punishment and doesn’t address the need of treatment and rehabilitation. By providing other alternatives to incarceration this allows women to address their addiction, maintain relationships with their children and obtain or maintain employment so they can provide for themselves and their families. I also believe that without a well structured program that fojcuses on rehabilitation the probability is high that relapses will continue to occur. Prison is not always the answer, many times there are underlying issues that contribute to addiction and those issues cannot always be addressed behind bars.
I agree with mostly everything that all of you are saying. Doing what I do and studying what I study, I see all sides of the criminal justice system. I see the worst of the worst in society one minute and am surprised by some of the best the next. I can see the aspect of there being no way to help these women. People who aren’t willing to put in the time and effort into helping themselves will not make it out. And while that is not a generalization, it happens more times than we would care to admit. It is easy to feel like there is no hope when we see people harm themselves over and over again. And the worst part is that often times, the innocent are harmed in the process. There was a push in the starting in the 1970’s to see women as criminals. Women are no longer “immune” to the classification of being a criminal. I do not agree with the staggering gap between men and women who are incarcerated for property or drug related offenses. 29.1% compared to 19.3%. That was just the percentage of sentenced offenders in 2005 for drug related imprisonment. Those numbers have only grown and the gap continues to widen. As a society at this point in history, we are walking a tightrope when it comes to women in the criminal justice system. There is the one side of treating women the same when it comes to crime. Being a single mother, woman of color, or a woman in poverty is not an excuse to commit a crime. What do we as a society say when we go easy on certain offenses just because of difference? On the other side, there is the need to look outside of the barbed wire fences and slamming cell doors. It is finding the appropriate course of action, whether that be rehab, programming, half way houses, community service etc. There are options. But the fear of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing that is holding us back when we look at equality in our system. Standards are standards when it comes to crime, but I think that we are in a period of change with women and what it means to be classified not only as a criminal, but as a woman and mother. I definitely can see that this is a debate that will go beyond just right and wrong.
I have seen children who have had their mom taken away from them at a very young age and this have had a big impact on how they fit into society. Even though it may be bad to have their father taken away but to have their mother taken away from them is even worst. Mothers are suppose to be nurturing to their children. They are suppose to the person that their children can look up to if the father was not present or if the father was not capable of becoming the role model for the children. I think that the majority of women who are incarcerated today are the women that are consider as being in the poverty. Poverty is a big issue that may take a while to find a solution to help fix but I think that the reason why women incarceration rate is so high is because of the responsibility that they have upon them. If they have children, their responsibility is to prove food and shelter for their children or etc. I think that if we can find a solution for poverty, maybe we can help lower the incarceration rate.
In society today, there are a lot of single mothers out there. Imagine a single mother going to jail, and she is already struggling to keep her child a live or even putting food into the child’s mouth; is there going to be a big impact on those children without parents? With the mothers who are being locked up in prison, it is majority minorities; what do you guys think is making this happen in the criminal justice system?
It is so disheartening to see that 2/3 of our women in prisons are mothers. Mothers are the basic foundation on which homes are built, that is, our children. And if the foundation is faulty, the future generations will have cause to fear. Many of these mothers in prison are not there intentionally, and they did not commit crime purposely to be in such state, but situations and circumstances led them to prison. According to Prentice Hall ” in a given year, anywhere from ten to twenty five percent of women are beaten by a male intimate, and a quarter to a half of all women will experience violence at the hands of a male intimate in their life time”. Many mothers cannot cope with the responsibilities of taking care of children, and so, look for other means to survive, either good or bad. That is why I will urge the government to look into how these mothers can be properly treated, and rehabilitated. Mothers are supposed to raise kids and not to languish in prisons. Their children are without parental protection and care needed, because even some fathers are irresponsible.
“Actually I am not shocked that nearly two-thirds of women in prison are mothers. Last year I visited the women prison in Shakopee and believe me or not some of these women have been in and out of prison on a yearly base. In prison there, they get their meals every day and if you have a child you got to spend more time outside your cell with your child. Seventy-seven percent of incarcerated mothers reported providing most of the daily care for their child and now everything is given in the prison there so why work hard for those women. Such incentives give those women confidence to re-offend again when they get out of the prison because they don’t want to work hard and better their life when they get out.”
I also have toured the women’s prison in Shakopee, and that is not what I took from that tour at all. Yes, the women do get to see their kids, but only on certain days and for a certain time period; it is not every day, all day and they never get to spend the night with the child (they used to, but it is no longer allowed, as they have “lost the privilege”). I think the women’s prison does a much better job at setting them up for success outside compared t the men’s prisons. They offer many more programs to educate the prisoners, including: GED programs, cosmetology training, service dog training, and more and they also are able to have more women participate in these programs. The men’s prisons offer education, but do not have such variety for job training-they get carpentry or warehouse work. Sure, there are people who are in it for the meals because it’s a steady source and they are still allowed many more freedoms comparatively to a man in prison, but there are some people in there who genuinely use these opportunities to turn their lives around, I would not go as far as to say it gives them the confidence to re-offend; however it is clear that some do. I don’t think it has much to do with the “cushy” provisions they receive in prison, but more with their environment they return to once they are released.
I hope that these children have active fathers. It would be more depressing to think that a child has an incarcerated mother and father.
These statistics complement those I read about in the book Investigating Difference. In the chapter that dealt with women they called the dramatic rise in incarceration equality with vengeance, essentially the courts are trying to make up for the paternalistic attitudes of the past. I personally don’t know what to make of the situation, like this study showed many women are imprisoned for drug related offenses and according to the text I read, women are imprisoned for drug offenses at a higher rate then men. I don’t know if that is true bias or that the men’s prisons are so full they can’t take what they deem lower level offenders. They also discussed incorporating both the concepts of sameness and difference into the criminal justice system. This suggested that we tailor fit the cjs process to women since their needs are different from men and so that the standards and rules made for men by men aren’t unfairly applied. I get what this approach is trying to accomplish but at the same time I can’t shake the feeling that at times focusing on sameness and at other times difference is incongruent with equality. The inverse to my feeling is that if one standard is applied to all without regard it will invariably affect some groups more then others and that is inherently unequal. The later position is probably correct. The largest issue here is the children and it is here that I might come off as cold but a lot of these women may in fact be unfit parents. Life is hard and it affects us all differently but what is the most ethical choice, to raise a child in an impoverished, unstable and toxic environment or to let a child be given a chance for a better future. I don’t have kids so that’s easy for me to say but at the same time I consciously made choices not to have children knowing that I don’t have the resources to adequately provide them with a decent life. Ones status as a mother does not mean you deserve leniency, conversely I feel it merits a hard look at the situation and condition their children live in because as a society we need to all we can to stop self perpetuating cycles.
The effects on children with parental incarceration are at high rate for following in their parents footsteps. And a child with a mother in prison is more likely to have major problems with behavioral and mourning the loss of their mother which is still alive but unable to have a normal family life because of the incarceration. The children are the ones who suffer by being displaced through other family member or foster care, lack of family values and behavioral problems. It is sad to know these children have to go without.